David C. Dollahite and Loren D.
Marks Brigham Young University
Hilary Dalton
Why Religion Helps and Harms Families: A
Conceptual Model of a System of Dualities at the
Nexus of Faith and Family Life
Evidence suggests that religion can both help
and harm families. We posit that a central rea-
son for these divergent outcomes is a system of
dualities at the nexus of religion and family. We
propose a conceptual framework of a dynamic
system of religious and relational dualities. We
propose eight dualities: (a) transcendent and
mundane spiritual experiences may affect fam-
ilies, (b) families may experience God as a close
confidant and an authority figure, (c) religion
in families may involve accepting and refusing
actions, (d) religion in families may include reli-
gious expectations and relational compensators,
(e) religion in families may generate and address
relational struggles, (f) religion in families may
be relationally divisive and unifying, (g) religion
in families may bring perplexing mysteries and
profound meanings, and (h) religion in families
may be a transforming and a maintaining influ-
ence. We discuss how these dualities lead to out-
comes that help and harm families.
Throughout history and across faiths and cul-
tures, religion has led to both good and evil—to
peace and war, to liberation and slavery, to
School of Family Life, Brigham Young University, 2092B
JFSB, Provo, UT, 84602 (david_dollahite@byu.edu).
Key Words: Family, outcomes, religion, spirituality, theory,
well-being.
Journal of Family Theory & Review 10 (March 2018): 219–241
DOI:10.1111/jftr.12242
Kansas State University
justice and oppression, to kindness and killing,
to love and hate, to charity and greed, to hospital-
ity and terrorism, and to familial joy and familial
sorrow. Religion influenced both Mother Teresa
of Calcutta and Osama bin Laden; both the
Inquisition and the Red Cross; both the horror of
9/11 and the healing of the Muslim relief agency
Red Crescent; both the violent fanaticism of
members of the Ku Klux Klan and the peaceful
patience of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma
Gandhi; both interfaith violence in the Middle
East, Africa, and India and interfaith cooperation
after natural disasters from various faith-based
relief agencies.
Because of divergent theories and findings,
social and behavioral science on religion has
sometimes generated more heat than light.
Religion has been glorified as a sustainer of
peace and demonized as an instigator of war
(Barter & Zatkin-Osburn, 2014; Brewer, Hig-
gins, & Teeney, 2010). Religious institutions
have been praised for providing social support
and scorned for promoting social conformity
(Hovey, Hurtado, & Morales, 2014; Welch,
Tittle, & Grasmick, 2006). Religion has been
hailed as a savior of the broken family and
attacked as a destroyer of tolerance and equal-
ity (Moore & Ovadia, 2006). Religion has
been lauded for encouraging parental care and
condemned for enabling parental and clerical
abuse (Gans, Silverstein, & Lowenstein, 2009;
Gilligan, 2012). Perhaps as both a cause and
219
220
an effect of these divergences, there are deep
ideological and experiential differences among
social scientists in relation to religion. It may
be that experiential differences lead to initial
ideological perspectives that are then brought to
bear in theory and research on religion.
Much of the research literature investigating
connections between religion and families has
produced conflicting outcomes, partly because
some scholars tend to investigate the benefits
while others focus on the ways religion can
be toxic to individuals and families (Marks &
Dollahite, 2017). Social science evidence indi-
cates that religion can be both a boon and a
bane to individuals, couples, families, commu-
nities, cultures, and nations (Burr, Marks, &
Day, 2012; Dollahite, Marks, & Young, in press;
Marks & Dollahite, 2017; Mahoney, Pargament,
Tarakeshwar, & Swank, 2001; Pargament &
Mahoney, 2005; Stark, 2012). Why does reli-
gion result in both great good and horrific harm?
An important part of the answer, we believe, is
that the effects of religion are both powerful and
divergent. If they were only powerful but not
divergent, religion would be helpful or harm-
ful but not both. If the effects of religion were
divergent but not powerful, its minimal influ-
ence would not warrant serious attention. Theo-
ries that simultaneously consider the reasons that
religion can both help and harm may provide a
more balanced perspective (Mahoney, 2010).
Can the Concept of Dualities Help Bring
Clarity?
From the evidence of history, social science,
and current events, it is fair to say that there
is great power in religion, but it is manifest
in divergent ways—ways that help and harm
individuals, families, and nations (Ammerman,
2013; Putnam & Campbell, 2010; Smith & Den-
ton, 2005; Stark, 2001, 2012). More explanation
about how and why religion produces divergent
outcomes in families is needed to elucidate often
conflicting and counterintuitive findings involv-
ing religious variables (Burr et al., 2012; Stark,
2001). We propose that exploring religious and
relational dualities at the nexus of religion and
family relationships, and an appreciation for the
ways that a system of dualities function in fam-
ilies, can help scholars move beyond these con-
tradictions to a more comprehensive (and more
valid) perspective including both the worst and
the best at the crossroads of religion and family.
Journal of Family Theory & Review
By “dualities” we mean that religion involves a
number of core ideas and practices that, when
lived in families, result in inherent inconsis-
tencies, tensions, and paradoxes. Duality is a
well-known construct in physics. For example,
with respect to the wave-particle duality of light,
Einstein summarized, “We have two contradic-
tory pictures of reality; separately neither of
them fully explains the phenomena of light, but
together they do” (Harrison, 2002).
In this article, we suggest that apprehend-
ing a system of dualities in religion and family
life may allow a more complete way to under-
stand the divergent outcomes flowing from reli-
gion into families, and we propose a conceptual
framework that attends to the realities of why
and how religion can both help and harm fam-
ily relationships. We posit that a central reason
for these divergent outcomes may be a system of
dualities at the nexus of religion and family. We
first examine how religion is powerfully diver-
gent and how duality is inherent in religion. Then
we present and illustrate a conceptual model of
how a system of religious dualities influences
family life in both helpful and harmful ways.
On the basis of our own beliefs and expe-
riences and on the growing body of research
highlighting the ways religion strengthens mar-
riage and family relationships, we are predis-
posed to focus on ways that religion can benefit
individuals and families. These biases need to be
addressed and, to the degree possible, checked or
countered (see Daly, 2007). Indeed, the present
article is a part of a sustained and systematic
effort on our part to challenge and counter our
own native biases by actively seeking for and
reporting data regarding how and why religion
can harm or generate struggles in family rela-
tionships (Dollahite et al., in press). Accord-
ingly, we note that all three authors are active
participants in our faith communities. As Mor-
mons, we belong to what Rodney Stark called a
“high-tension faith” and, as part of a “people of
paradox” (Givens, 2007), have personally expe-
rienced a number of the dualities we address in
this article. Additionally, the three authors reflect
diversities including gender (male and female),
age cohort (baby boomer, generation X, mil-
lennial), childhood religion (Episcopalian, Mor-
mon), and many other differences.
For the past 15 years, we have conducted
research with an ethnically diverse sample of
highly involved Christian, Jewish, and Muslim
American families from across America (the
Why Religion Helps and Harms Families
sample has grown to include nearly 200 fam-
ilies [N = 476 participants]). Thus, because of
our research and our own religious involvement,
we are more familiar with Western, monotheistic
faiths and we fully acknowledge that the theory
we propose may be both more reflective of and
more relevant to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam
than to many non-Western faiths. We make no
claims that our model is universally applicable
across faiths, times, cultures, and families, yet
we think that the ideas we propose have broad
relevance for families across many faiths.
Dualities in Religion and Family Life
Because the construct of religious dualities we
propose differs from the idea of dualism found
in theology and philosophy, a brief discussion
of theological dualism will help clarify the dis-
tinction. Theological dualism refers to the idea
that reality consists of two basic opposing ele-
ments such as mind and matter (Atmanspacher
& Fach, 2013). Much religious thought pro-
poses that the deep nature of things involves
and integrates pairs of opposites that must be
understood and addressed. In the Abrahamic
faiths, even God is portrayed as dualistic. In the
Torah, the New Testament, the Qur’an, and the
Book of Mormon, God is described (including
self-description) with many dualistic attributes:
a warrior and a peacemaker; a king and a shep-
herd; a creator and a destroyer; a healer and an
inflictor of disease; a giver and taker of life; one
who curses and one who blesses; one who is mer-
ciful and just; forgiving and wrathful; one who
favors certain people (e.g., the Seed of Abra-
ham) and nations (e.g., Israel); and one who is
no respecter of persons or nations; and as both
dwelling in the highest heavens and as dwelling
in the human heart.
Of course, not all religions include theo-
logical dualism. However, religious dualism is
present in many Western faiths (e.g., Judaism,
Christianity, Islam) and some Eastern faiths
(e.g., Taoism, Confucianism). Such dualisms
include heaven and earth, God and Satan, good
and evil, the eternal and the finite, light and
darkness, mind and body, and justice and mercy.
The Vedic scriptures of Hinduism teach dual-
ism between the supreme God and the universe.
Ontological dualism is part of Taoism which
posits that opposite forces are interconnected.
221
This idea is often represented through the princi-
ple of yin and yang, wherein opposite forces are
complementary and interdependent.
Our concept, religious dualities, is not syn-
onymous with the theological concept of dual-
ism. Dualities are not simple dichotomies. Our
concept of dualities refers to two different, but
not necessarily opposing or dichotomous, pro-
cesses or outcomes that have some tensions
between them and are part of a system of duali-
ties discussed in more detail later in the article.
Dualities in family relationships add even
more complexity. Most, if not all, marriages
and families are characterized by oscillations
between intimacy and distance, concern and apa-
thy, joy and sadness, harmony and conflict, unity
and division, sacrifice and selfishness, super-
ficiality and depth, routine and transcendence,
boredom and excitement, privacy and disclosure,
forgiveness and bitterness, generosity and petti-
ness, devotion and betrayal, and respect for indi-
viduals and for the family as a whole. These are
only some of the many relational dualities that
could be theorized.
Although not all religions are dualistic, we
suggest that most religious families experience
some dualities generated by religion. Likely,
most families do not face all eight dualities we
propose in this article, but we suggest they prob-
ably will experience some of them, as well as
other dualities that we have not yet identified.
Given the complexities and variance in both
religions and families, we might expect great
divergence in processes and outcomes that may
explain the range of experiences within the same
family or faith community.
Brief Overview of Research on Religion
and Family Life
William James (1902), a father of American
psychology, demonstrated in The Varieties
of Religious Experience that there are both
“healthy-minded” and “sick-souled” versions of
religion. Histories of the effects of religion on
societal and personal well-being indicate that
while negative (even catastrophic) outcomes
have been evidenced, religion also has played a
substantial role in bettering humanity in several
documentable ways (Stark, 2001, 2012). For
example, in Handbook of the Psychology of
Religion and Spirituality, Donahue and Nielsen
(2005) reviewed literature demonstrating that
religion can be both helpful and harmful to
222
society. The “goods” that come with religious
involvement may include promoting under-
standing, tolerance, and peace. The “bads” that
come with religious involvement may include
promoting prejudice, intolerance, and war.
Not only are the effects of religion both good
and bad; they can be both powerfully good and
powerfully bad. This is demonstrable at macro
levels, but religion can also have bifurcated
effects in families—even in the same family. For
example, in a series of qualitative studies on fam-
ilies and fathers of children with special needs,
we found that for many of the participants, their
religious beliefs, practices, and communities
were reportedly helpful (sometimes profoundly
so) in coping with both existential and pragmatic
challenges that arose (Dollahite, 2003; Marks
& Dollahite, 2001; Olson, Dollahite, & White,
2002). Even so, in several instances, the same
families reflected that when their religious com-
munities failed them, “it was both disappointing
and hurtful in ways that … elicit[ed] deeper frus-
tration and pain than failures by secular agen-
cies and institutions” (Marks & Dollahite, 2001,
p. 636). Indeed, to use Annette Mahoney’s con-
cept, the “sanctifying” of one’s religious com-
munity figuratively places that sphere of life on
a pedestal—and the further the fall from the idyl-
lic pedestal, the greater the potentially damaging
impact or sense of betrayal (see Mahoney, Parga-
ment, Murray-Swank, & Murray-Swank, 2003).
Religion May Help
Research demonstrates that religion may (a)
provide meaning for life (Hood, Hill, & Spilka,
2009; Park, 2005); (b) bring comfort to those
who have lost loved ones or are otherwise
suffering (Brotherson & Soderquist, 2002); (c)
organize people into communities of care that
provide material, social, psychological, rela-
tional, and other benefits to many (Stark, 2012);
(d) call adherents to look beyond their own
faith community to care for “others” (Monsma,
2005); (e) provide one of the few remaining
contexts for meaningful interaction across three
to four social generations (Putnam & Campbell,
2010); (f) help people face death (Dezutter,
Luyckx, & Hutsebaut, 2009); (g) promote
positive coping with stress in varying contexts
(Goeke-Morey et al., 2014; Lamis et al., 2014;
Pargament, 1997); (h) promote moral develop-
ment in children (Hardy, Dollahite, & Baldwin,
in press); and (j) sanctify marital and family
Journal of Family Theory & Review
relationships in ways that help couples and
families enhance their relational dynamics and
levels of intimacy (Fincham & Beach, 2014;
Hernandez, Mahoney, & Pargament, 2011; Kus-
ner, Mahoney, Pargament, & DeMaris, 2014;
Mahoney, 2010; Mahoney et al., 1999).
The preceding marital and family related find-
ings are supplemented, even superseded, by a
substantial body (more than 1,200 studies) of
empirical work that has correlated religiosity
with bio-psycho-social benefits for older adults,
middle adults, and adolescents (Petts, 2014;
Sabey, Rauer, & Jensen, 2014; Smith & Den-
ton, 2005). Recurring findings include subjec-
tive self-reports of moderately better mental
health and social support for the more religiously
involved (Koenig et al., 2001, 2012; Marks &
Dollahite, 2017), but they also include more
objective and concrete findings such as signifi-
cantly increased longevity rates among frequent
church attenders (7.6 years in a nationally repre-
sentative sample; 13.7 years for African Amer-
icans; see Hummer et al., 1999). Empirically,
there are “goods” that seem to correlate with
religious involvement at the individual, mari-
tal, familial, and societal levels. For example,
at the societal level, Stark’s (2012) book Amer-
ica’s Blessings sociologically demonstrates how
religion benefits “everyone, including atheists”
since greater religiosity has been repeatedly
empirically associated with lower crime, higher
levels of prosocial behavior, greater levels of
mental and physical health, more generosity, and
higher levels of achievement including educa-
tion.
Religion May Harm
A scholarly treatise on religion at its worst, Not
in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence
(Sacks, 2015) was recently offered by leading
Jewish intellectual, rabbi, and Templeton Prize
winner Jonathan Sacks. After delineating histor-
ical and contemporary atrocities “justified” by
religion, Sacks concluded, “Religion is at its best
when it relies on the strength of … example. It
is at its worst when it seeks to impose truth by
force” (p. 234, emphasis in original).
Through a social scientific lens, it may be
posited that religion also may (a) create moral
certainty in believers that leads to conflict with
nonbelievers (Woodruff, Van Tongeren, McEl-
roy, Davis, & Hook, 2014); (b) divide people
between believers and nonbelievers, saved and
Why Religion Helps and Harms Families
damned, “us” and “them” (Lichterman, 2008;
Makowsky, 2011); (c) lead people to experience
guilt, repression, and hypocrisy (Inozu, Karanci,
& Clark, 2012); (d) promote passive fatalism
(Franklin, Schlundt, & Wallston, 2008); (e) cre-
ate gender inequities in marriage, family, and
society (Schnabel, 2016; Sigalow & Fox, 2014);
(f) encourage irrational and/or “magical” think-
ing (Routledge, Abeyta, & Roylance, 2016); (g)
enable sexual, emotional, physical, and/or finan-
cial victimization and abuse of children, elderly,
and other vulnerable persons (Simonic, Mandelj,
& Novsak, 2013; Stotland, 2000); and (h) be sub-
ject to being employed as a destructive force or
weapon (i.e., the Inquisition, pogroms, the Cru-
sades, jihad, the Holocaust, terrorism).
How can these composites of beneficial
“bests” and horrific “worsts” be traced to the
common source of religious belief and practice?
One explanation is that thoughts and percep-
tions about God and religion matter greatly. In
America’s Four Gods, Froese and Bader (2010)
used data from the Baylor Religion Study to
demonstrate that how people think about God
has great influence on a variety of other atti-
tudes and actions. In addition, how beliefs are
lived also matters. The family theorist Wes
Burr (2012) explored the question of religious
duality in connection with the family system
and posited, “It is what we do as a result of
[our perceptions], ideals, and beliefs about the
sacred that determines whether the sacred is
helpful or harmful in families.” We concur
that “the way that beliefs are lived out … gives
them destructive or creative power” (Marks &
Dollahite, 2017, p. 14, emphasis in original).
Development of the Conceptual Model
In this section, we briefly discuss how a system
of dualities at the heart of the religion–family
nexus became central to our approach in devel-
oping the conceptual model of a system of dual-
ities. When we previously reviewed the state of
the religion–family field, we suggested that the
following paradoxes deserved special attention
in future research:
(a) religion is a unifying force for many couples
and families but a divisive force in others; (b)
religiosity is both a conservative and a transfor-
mative force in relationships; (c) there are both
mundane and transcendental aspects to religious
life, and both of these affect families in mean-
ingful ways; (d) a strong religious identity both
223
unites a family with other adherents and separates
them from members of other faiths or nonbeliev-
ers; (e) religion both excites and calms passions
within families; (f) strong religious commitments
have important binding and liberating features to
them; and (g) faith has both highly private and
highly public aspects, and both are relevant to
family life. Such paradoxes merit sustained explo-
ration because careful attention to duality may
provide telling insights on the religion–family
interface. (Dollahite, Marks, & Goodman, 2004,
pp. 423–424)
Over the intervening years, we interviewed
476 parents and adolescents about linkages
between their religion and their family life.
These data comprise more than 4,200 pages of
interview transcripts. Systematic coding with
interrater reliability above .90 has identified
more than 26,000 examples of dualities across
all families. We have used a variety of quali-
tative methods (typically involving grounded
theory but also theory-guided coding) to try
to understand these linkages. One of the most
important discoveries from these analyses is
that—despite the fact that our sample consisted
of highly religious people who were recom-
mended to us by religious leaders as exemplars
of strong families in their congregations—there
were inherent tensions, conflicts, and challenges
within marriages and families (Dollahite et al.,
in press) and between highly religious families
and the surrounding culture (Marks, Dollahite,
& Young, 2017). We identified the paradoxes
mentioned earlier as well as additional dualities
(sample description, coding process, and data
summary table are included as Supplementary
Material with the online version of this article).
In the past several years we have conceived,
operationalized, and tested a number of possi-
ble dualities. We reviewed existing empirical and
conceptual literature, interviewed 32 religious
leaders from various faiths, conducted in-depth
interviews with hundreds of religious parents
and youth, attended religious services in many
of the faith communities we studied, carefully
studied the religious texts of various faiths, and
conducted dozens of rigorous and diverse analy-
ses of the transcribed interviews.
An Abduction Approach to Theory Development
In this article, we present the eight dualities
we found most compelling and that were best
supported by the data. Much of the basis for
224
our theory is careful and repeated analyses of
our interview data. However, in the development
of the model presented in this article we also
employed abduction approaches to theory devel-
opment. According to Douven (2016) “philoso-
phers of science have argued that abduction is
a cornerstone of scientific methodology” (p. 4).
He describes abduction as “inference to the best
explanation” (p. 1) and highlights envisioning
new theoretical possibilities particularly when
empirically equivalent explanations of a phe-
nomenon exist. Family theorist and qualitative
methodologist Kerry Daly (2007) presented a
conceptual model, “Recursive Patterns in The-
ory Development—Abduction” (p. 53), in which
he listed a number of ways that qualitative schol-
ars think as they develop theoretical models
beyond induction and deduction. Daly included
drawing on (a) existing theory and (b) emerging
theory, as well as (c) observing the social world,
(d) imagination, (e) metaphor, and (f) creative
thinking.
A Dialogical Approach to Theory Development
Family theory scholar Stan Knapp (2009) issued
a call for family scholars to improve the way
we generate theory. He contrasts what he called
a “monological” approach to theory, which is
“an approach that engages in theory and research
exclusively within the confines of its own logic,
assumptions, language, and so forth, limits what
we can know and produces degenerative con-
sequences,” to a dialogical approach (Knapp,
2009, pp. 135–136). Knapp (2009) proposed that
“what is required for a healthy, mature, scientific
study of family phenomena is an active, collec-
tive process of continuing engagement with the
grounding assumptions of theory and research
and dialogical engagement with genuine alter-
native possibilities” (p. 142). We agree that it
is important for scholars to make the ground-
ing assumptions of a theory explicit and that it
is important to engage in what he called “dia-
logical theoretical practices” (p. 133) to discuss
the theoretical concepts being used and/or advo-
cated in dialog with ideas from other perspec-
tives that may differ or be opposed to the ideas
one is advancing.
We have employed an approach we believe
is consistent with “dialogical engagement” to
develop the framework presented in this article.
This process has involved more than 16 years of
sustained and careful attention to the hundreds
Journal of Family Theory & Review
of conversations among the family members that
we interviewed about how their religion influ-
enced them as persons and in their marriage, par-
enting, and family life; the many conversations
with our more than 130 coders as they helped us
systematically code the data during more than 50
distinct published analyses across time; our con-
versations with many reviewers and editors who
have carefully and constructively evaluated our
evolving conceptual and empirical work and rec-
ommended revisions in our thinking and mod-
els; the hundreds of conversations we have had
with each other about how the idea of a sys-
tem of dualities at the family–religion nexus
might work and might help make sense of the
complex and controversial domain of religion
and family; conversations with various schol-
ars who have influenced our thinking (includ-
ing psychologists Annette Mahoney, Pam King,
Chris Boyatzis, and Frank Fincham; and sociol-
ogists Vern Bengtson, Christian Smith, and John
Bartkowski); and “imagined conversations” (i.e.,
reading and considering their ideas) with late,
great thinkers on religion including William
James, Huston Smith, and Harold Bloom.
Assumptions
Whereas the following core assumptions are
based on our personal and empirical obser-
vations of the social world, by definition,
assumptions cannot be proven (see Doherty,
Boss, LaRossa, Schumm, & Steinmetz, 1993,
for a discussion of presenting theoretical models
by identifying core assumptions and defining
major concepts):
1. Beliefs regarding God can have profound
impact on how people think about, feel about,
and act in their marriage and family relation-
ships.
2. Many religious spouses, parents, and children
try to find ways to live their faith that promote
personal and relational well-being according
to their deeply held religious beliefs.
3. Religious beliefs, practices, and communi-
ties have the potential to facilitate great good
and/or great harm in family members and
family relationships.
4. While faith communities may have substan-
tial influence on adherents, human beings also
have agency and may make choices about
how to live out their faith.
5. Well-informed, well-intentioned, well-
educated, and good-hearted people can
Why Religion Helps and Harms Families
fundamentally and diametrically disagree on
issues of faith and family life.
6. Religious extremism, oppression, and coer-
cion are inherently harmful to individual
agency and relational well-being.
7. In-depth interviews with multiple members of
religious couples and families offer an effec-
tive method for providing a nuanced under-
standing of the religion–family nexus.
Definition of Major Concepts
System of dualities. A dynamic system of dialec-
tic processes reflects inherent inconsistencies,
tensions, and paradoxes that may exist at the
nexus of religion and family relationships. Each
duality is composed of a pair of elements reflect-
ing contrasting aspects and outcomes of being a
religious family, although the system of duali-
ties may result in divergent relational processes
and outcomes in families. Persons, couples, and
families make choices that intentionally or unin-
tentionally influence how they manage the sys-
tem of dualities. While some dualities may exist
in many families, we propose that each fam-
ily has its own system of dualities that depend
on a number of factors, including personal ones
such as temperament, personality, experience,
and family background, as well as personal ide-
ologies about issues such as politics and gender;
relational factors such as gender roles, power
dynamics, relational flexibility, relational cohe-
sion, and relational satisfaction and stability;
religious factors such as faith commitment, level
of orthodoxy, and approach to religion; and cul-
tural factors such as degree of progressiveness,
openness, and hierarchy in the culture.
Elements of dualities. Each duality consists of
a pair of elements that are, to some extent, in
ongoing tension. In trying to understand and
explain the religion–family nexus, it is helpful
to be aware of each element, more helpful to be
aware of each duality, and most helpful to be
aware of the entire system of dualities.
Conceptual Framework of a Dynamic
System of Dualities
Concepts in the model are illustrated using
exemplars from in-depth interviews with par-
ticipants in our ongoing American Families of
Faith research project. We also discuss ways that
each duality can both help and harm marriage
225
and family relationships, thus linking specific
dualities with particular divergent outcomes.
Although participants discussed complexities
and dualities at the nexus of religion and family,
they focused more on the ways that religion
helped their marriages and families as a func-
tion of the nature of the sample (exemplars
in faith and family) as well as the types of
questions asked during interviews. We are well
aware of the tendency for social scientists to
reify theoretical concepts by projecting motives
onto research respondents and others as if those
people had the scholars’ concepts in mind as
they thought and acted. To be clear, we are
under no illusions that the couples and families
we interviewed (or any families) think and
have conversations about these ideas using the
concepts and terms in our proposed model.
Table 1 presents the system of dualities and
provides brief definitions of each element in
the proposed conceptual model. Each element
(labeled “a” or “b”), in and of itself describes
a part of the religion–family nexus but also
is one part of a pair of concepts (a duality),
as well as part of a system of processes that
characterize the family–religion nexus. Dualities
are organized into four conceptual dimensions
(each including two dualities): spiritual and reli-
gious experiences, personal choices and conse-
quences, family relational dynamics, and mean-
ing and change.1
Duality 1: Transcendent and Mundane
Spiritual Experiences May Affect Families
Transcendent experiences are unexpected or
unusual spiritual and religious experiences
that are beyond daily, normal experience. Roy
(2001) stated, “A transcendent experience can
be characterized as an event in which indi-
viduals, by themselves or in a group, have
the impression that they are in contact with
something boundless and limitless, which they
cannot grasp, and which utterly surpasses
human capacities” (p. xi). Typically, such expe-
riences are considered sacred. In scholarship
1 See the online Supplementary Material for the frequen-
cies and percentages of how often each element and duality
appeared in the interviews. There were 26,295 total coded
accounts across the 16 elements of duality (Mean = about
133 total coded elements per interview). At least seven ele-
ments appeared in 90% or more of the 198 interviews.
226 Journal of Family Theory & Review

Table 1. Dimensions and Elements of Dualities at the Nexus of Religion and Families

Dimension A: Spiritual and Religious Experiences

1. Transcendent and Mundane Spiritual 2. Families May Experience God as a Close
Experiences May Affect Families Confidant and an Authority Figure

a. Transcendent experiences: unexpected or a. Close confidant: God is experienced as an

unusual spiritual and religious experiences intimate friend, comforter, guide, healer who
that are beyond daily, normal experience personally touches persons and families

b. Mundane experiences: normal, expected, or b. Authority figure: God is experienced as an

prosaic spiritual and religious experiences that imposing lord, lawgiver, king, judge, ruler
are more typical in regular religious practice who brings order and justice to the world

Dimension B: Personal Choices and Consequences

3. Religion in Families May Involve Accepting 4. Religion in Families May Include Religious
and Refusing Actions Expectations and Relational Compensators

a. Accepting actions:choices to allow into a. Religious expectations: religious actions (e.g.,

personal and family life ideas, influences, duties, sacrifices, offerings, changes, service)
images, and substances perceived as sacred required by God, congregation, and family

b. Refusing actions: choices to refuse to allow b. Relational compensators: relational blessings

into personal and family life ideas, influences, (e.g., comfort, peace, grace, forgiveness,
images, and substances perceived as profane support) from God, congregation, and family

Dimension C: Family Relational Dynamics

5. Religion in Families May Generate and 6. Religion in Families May Be Relationally
Address Relational Struggles Divisive and Unifying

a. Generates struggles: relational burdens, a. Relationally divisive: disharmony with family

disunities, abuses, and offenses associated members and others resulting from religious
with devout belief and committed practice belief, identity, obligations, and choices

b. Addresses struggles: relationally relevant b. Relationally unifying: harmony with family

assistance from religious beliefs and practices members and others resulting from religious
(e.g., prayer, scripture study, ritual, worship) belief, practice, identity, and traditions

Dimension D: Meaning and Change

7. Religion in Families May Bring Perplexing 8. Religion in Families May Be a Transforming
Mysteries and Profound Meanings and a Maintaining Influence

a. Perplexing mysteries: Personal and relational a. Transforming influence: religion involves

realities that are difficult to understand or personal and relational growth, change,
accept despite—or because of—religiousness progress, and reconciliation

b: Profound meanings: Religious understandings b. Maintaining influence: religion entails abiding

about marriage, family life, and relationships truths, timeless rituals, and enduring traditions
that provide purpose, significance, and identity that promote relational stability
Why Religion Helps and Harms Families
on transcendent experiences, theologians and
religious studies scholars have used terms such
as absolute, infinite, mystical, ineffable, and
numinous. Mundane experience has to do with
normal or expected spiritual and religious expe-
riences such as prayers, reading sacred texts,
attending religious services, religiously based
meditation, and other (often) prosaic religious
experience. Our theoretical model focuses on
how such experiences may influence marriage
and family life. On the basis of our research,
most families typically experience their faith
in nontranscendent (mundane) ways, but many
also have occasional experiences that they
identify as deeply spiritual or even transcendent
(Dollahite, Marks, LeBaron, & Young, 2017).
• Element 1a: Transcendent experiences. A
Christian wife whose husband was dying,
shared the following experience:
I just remember sitting there in the hospital room
thinking I’m too young to be a widow. It really
worked out well and [our church leader] ...
showed up and I’ll tell you, I literally saw the
power of heaven just descend. I tell you it was
just amazing. I opened my eyes to see if I really
was seeing something, but I could feel it so
strongly. … Everything turned out well and prob-
ably for the better. I think it made us stronger
together and just really made us appreciate
life more.
Transcendent spiritual experiences were not
commonly reported by those interviewed but
were often seen as something special enough to
be remembered, even several years later.
• Element 1b: Mundane experiences. Religion
also can be mundane or concerned with the
everyday. As an Arab American Muslim hus-
band explained:
[R]eligion is not separate from the way you live
your life. Everything you do in your life should be
“religious.” The way you behave with people is
part of your religion. The way you drive your car
is part of your religion. [Religion] affects your
behavior.
A nondenominational Christian wife said, “It
should influence how I live today because of
my faith; today I should be more loving, kind,
patient, more other-centered in life.”
Helping and harming. Transcendent spiritual
experiences may help relationships by providing
227
family members a sense of connection with eter-
nal realities or beings that can provide a deeper
sense of meaning, helping families obtain inspi-
ration to persevere against challenges. Likewise,
more mundane religious experience may help
by providing family members with structure.
However, if people focus excessively on tran-
scendence, they may neglect important routine
aspects of family life, leading to dysfunction.
Likewise, if overly focused on the mundane,
transcendent aspects of religion and family
may be missed. Further, if family members
diverge on the relative importance of tran-
scendent or mundane experience, conflict may
ensue.
Duality 2: Religious Families May Experience
God as Close Confidant and Authority Figure
Studies have indicated that the way people per-
ceive and relate to God can have implications
for marital and family relationships and other
aspects of family life (Shichida, Dollahite, &
Carroll, 2015). In the Abrahamic faiths, God
is described as both a close confidant who is
an intimate companion—but also as an author-
ity figure that should be respected and obeyed,
even feared. Many of the religious families
we interviewed experienced God in both ways.
God was experienced as an intimate friend,
comforter, guide, and healer who personally
touches persons and families. God also was
experienced as an imposing lord, lawgiver, king,
judge, ruler who brings order and justice to the
world.
• Element 2a: Close confidant. A teenage
Catholic boy said: “Being religious is kind
of like you have another friend. It’s God
and Jesus, you feel like you’re able to lean
back on someone, if the going’s tough.” A
nondenominational Christian mother said:
I think [about] the importance of seeing God as
someone who is alive and real and wants to be
a part of our life, not just an abstract idea but a
person, a person who is interested in us and who
knows us and loves us and wants us to be in a
relationship with Him. When you get to that point,
when you realize that He cares about you as
a person and that He’s real, someone who’s here
even though we can’t see Him—the reality of Him
loving us beyond what we can now understand
... that He wants to show us the way to go to
heaven ... [it can change you].
228
• Element 2b: Authority figure. There were
several ways that participants seemed to have
a relationship with God as an authority figure.
Some felt that they needed to follow “what-
ever God says.” A Chinese Christian mother
said, “Although there are things that you dis-
agree [with] or are difficult for you to obey
reasonably, we should do them according to
God’s words.” Others similarly discussed the
importance of “doing what God says,” includ-
ing Muslims who discussed their daily actions
being recorded in a heavenly “book of life”
by which they will be judged after this life is
over, for good or for evil.
Helping and harming. Seeing God as a close
confidant may allow family members to always
have someone in whom they can confide about
problems or issues that arise and from whom
they can obtain direction or guidance. Family
members may be able to find motivation to move
forward through relational difficulties with God
as a close confidant. They can also trust that their
life has purpose because a caring God is direct-
ing it. However, viewing God as a close con-
fidant could be harmful to family life if taken
to the extreme. If a family member expects to
be able to go to God and receive direction for
every decision, he or she might miss out on
opportunities for relational closeness with fam-
ily members—and other possibilities for emo-
tional intimacy and elevating influence. Seeing
God as an authority figure could also be harm-
ful to family life if submitting to “God’s desires”
involves neglecting familial responsibilities.
Duality 3: Religion in Families May Involve
Accepting and Refusing Actions
Religion in families may involve choices about
whether to allow into one’s personal and fam-
ily life various ideas, influences, images, and
substances that are perceived as sacred. Choices
may also be made to refuse to allow ideas,
influences, images, and substances that are per-
ceived as profane into personal and family life.
Among those we interviewed, both tendencies
were evidenced. And both reportedly yielded
positive and negative relational results. While
most religions involve some kinds of discipline
and expect adherents to make choices about what
to accept and reject from various sources, more
high-tension faiths (Stark & Finke, 2000) tend to
Journal of Family Theory & Review
expect adherents to accept more religious obliga-
tions and refuse “worldly” actions and ideas.
• Element 3a: Accepting actions. A Native
American Methodist husband said: “I think
our style of disciplining and consequences
has altered as our faith has grown stronger.
And there’s a lot more forgiveness attached
to the consequences and a lot less anger.” A
Baptist wife said, “The ... primary decisions
we make or ways we go about things would
be based on who God is, or who we see God
is, or what we feel God is calling us to do, or
what we believe he says in his word.”
• Element 3b: Refusing actions. An Asian
American Christian husband stated, “We
don’t take vacation on Sunday anymore;
usually we take vacation from Monday until
Friday now [so we don’t miss church].” A
Greek Orthodox Christian husband said:
The Orthodox church has a very strict ... [a]
set sort of way of morally interacting with other
people and in today’s society, I spend two weeks
a month on the road [and] there are temptations
out there that I’ve never succumbed to and one of
the reasons is my faith gives me the strength not
to do that.
Helping and harming. Accepting direction from
God or religion can help families if the influ-
ence improves relationships. Refusing on reli-
gious principle was reported as positive when
families refused harmful influences (e.g., sex-
ualized media, harmful substances) to remain
strong in their faith. Yet accepting or refus-
ing outright could be harmful if done blindly.
Some expressed how accepting scriptures liter-
ally (i.e., wife should submit to husband) could
cause problems. Also, refusing for religious rea-
sons can be harmful. A Chinese Christian wife
said: “We would not think about divorce no
matter how big the difficulties are. We must
work out and resolve the difficulties in the Lord.
… This idea cannot emerge into my mind.”
Refusing divorce can help resolve problems but
can be harmful in the face of abuse. Refusing
also may prevent positive social interactions. For
example, the dietary restrictions of Jews, Mus-
lims, Mormons, and Seventh-day Adventists can
limit participation in food- and/or drink-based
events where meaningful interaction might ben-
efit multiple persons.
Why Religion Helps and Harms Families
Duality 4: Religion in Families May Include
Religious Expectations and Relational
Compensators
Religion in families may involve (often uncom-
fortable) expectations as well as compensating
blessings. Religious expectations involve reli-
gious actions commanded by God, and thus
expected by congregation, and family (e.g.,
religious duties, sacrifices, offerings, changes,
service). This may include requests or demands
from a parent, spouse, or leader to sacrifice
or change on the basis of religious standards
or commandments. Relational compensators
include such things as harmony with family
members, forgiveness, and relationally-oriented
inspiration resulting from religious belief, prac-
tice, identity, and traditions. These may involve
families and their members receiving religious
support, forgiveness, and guidance provided by
parents or other members of the family or faith
community. The divergence between compen-
sators and expectations centers on the tensions
between (a) expressions that one is doing all
that can be expected and (b) expressions that
more is expected and thus change is required.
This duality impacts parent–child relation-
ships and intergenerational relationships more
broadly.
• Element 4a: Religious expectations. A num-
ber of participants reported that parents
should teach and expect their children to be
obedient and to live religious principles. A
Jehovah’s Witness mother gave an example
of an expectation of religious service and
loyalty:
I feel that’s very important as parents that from
the time that they’re infants that we train them
to think of others right away and not to be the
prominent “takers.” But I always am a firm
believer: give, give, give, even if it hurts. And I
want my children to give and to love people, and
to be loyal to Jehovah. That’s just something since
they’ve been babies that we’ve tried to instill
in them.
An East Indian Muslim husband spoke of having
expectations of his children:
I think it’s important that you have taught them the
values of the religion when they’re small. So they
grow up feeling their individual accountability. …
They themselves know they’re being watched, and
they’re accountable.
229
• Element 4b: Relational compensators. A
European American Orthodox Christian
father and his daughter expressed the power
for good that they felt forgiveness had when
they were asked about how forgiveness
affected family relationships:
Daughter: It certainly makes it easier so you’re
not carrying stuff around all the time, grudges or
anything.
Father: Yes, there’s a bonding. Forgiveness
and the commonality of the things that we do
together, there’s a certain bond there that
strengthens the family unit.
A Jewish mother shared how her rabbi came to
comfort her and her faith community members
provided what she, her daughter, and her family
needed as she struggled with hospitalizations for
severe postpartum depression:
All along the way, [our] rabbi was there for me,
at times with me, bringing me little booklets with
prayers in them, at the hospital, and I know saying
prayers for me. Ephraim [husband] was by my
side, physically, and emotionally, every moment
that he could be. Our friends from the community
came together to help, as they could, with our
daughter.
Helping and harming. The relationally compen-
sating aspects of religion may help family mem-
bers deal with pain, loss, loneliness, and other
difficulties. Likewise, the fact that God and/or
a faith community expects adherents to live a
certain way can help people have a sense of
structure and purpose. However, if one only
comforts others and does not take care of one-
self, this can be harmful. Although intergener-
ational compensators and expectations are not
necessarily in opposition or conflict, there are
often tensions that, if not wisely managed, can
negatively affect intergenerational relationships
and spiritual development. If expectations are
coercive, problems arise, as noted by an Ortho-
dox Jewish husband: “Sometimes you’ve got
to enforce it because you want the observance
kept; you want to maintain a certain level of
observance in the house [but] … it’s a fine line
between that and doing it as a way of domi-
nating everybody else around.” Some said that
their belief that God demands sexual fidelity
helped them avoid actions that may have seri-
ously harmed their marriage. However, if people
230
perceive good things in their lives as only com-
ing from God or religion and correspondingly go
only to God or religion for help, they may ignore
other helpful resources. But if a person perceives
that God or religion requires too much of him
or her, to the point of exhaustion or neglect
of other life responsibilities, this also can be
harmful.
Duality 5: Religion in Families May Generate
and Address Relational Struggles
Religion generates relational struggles such as
burdens (feelings of failure and inadequacy in
fulfilling religious expectations pertaining to
relationships, and the pressures of being obli-
gated with religious responsibilities concerning
relationships.), disunities (feeling in conflict
with others or separated from others), abuses
(inferiority, force, domination, abuse, threat,
teasing, and persecution), and offenses (insen-
sitive or hurtful words or actions from others).
Religion also addresses relational struggles by
providing relationally relevant assistance from
religious beliefs and practices (e.g., prayer,
scripture study, ritual, worship). Faith commu-
nities offer various ways for adherents to frame
and understand trials and afflictions in produc-
tive and salutogenic ways (Marks & Dollahite,
2017; Prothero, 2010).
• Element 5a: Generates relational struggles.
An Arab American Shia Muslim expressed
how conflict arose due to differing beliefs in
her own marriage:
In our ... 10 years of marriage, the most tumul-
tuous years were the first ... two and a half,
and religion actually was the cause of these con-
flicts, because we have, in certain areas, quite
different religious interpretations.
An African American Christian husband said:
My dad was not a believer. He pretended to be one
‘til [after] he married my mother and then he didn’t
go to church for the next 50 years. … So it was real
difficult ‘cause my mom was a preacher’s kid. …
[The conflict] was crazy.
• Element 5b: Addresses relational struggles.
Family members frequently reported turn-
ing to prayer, scripture study, ritual, forgive-
ness, church attendance, and other religious
resources to address relational struggles. A
Presbyterian husband said:
Journal of Family Theory & Review
The thing my relationship with God has done is
that I’m not afraid that [my wife] will divorce me.
I’m not afraid of that. And that gives me a lot of
confidence and it allows me to be who I am and
not [be] walking on eggshells all the time.
Helping and harming. The ways that religions
address relational struggles are often helpful.
However, if religion addresses relational strug-
gles in ways that, for instance, promote exces-
sive conflict avoidance, it can be harmful. Any
religious teaching that creates relational strug-
gles may seem inherently harmful but if reli-
gion holds out a vision or expectation of positive
relational behavior it could lead to a relational
struggle that may help the relationship improve.
Religious teachings that people should act with
patience, kindness, forgiveness, or altruism in
marriage and family relationships, could create
such a relational struggle. For example, a fam-
ily member who feels they have not been treated
as the religion dictates may initiate a relational
struggle that may end up being helpful to the
person and relationship if the offending person
concurs that his or her actions were not consis-
tent with religious values and agrees to try to
improve their behavior.
Duality 6: Religion in Families May Be
Relationally Divisive and Unifying
Putnam and Campbell (2010) documented
several ways that religion unifies and divides
Americans politically and socially. We have
found similar effects in the impact of religion
on marriages and families (Marks & Dollahite,
2017; Marks, Hatch, & Dollahite, in press).
Religion can promote disharmony with family
members and others resulting from religious
belief, identity, obligations, and choices and
may divide one from those outside the faith
or from those within the faith with different
views or approaches to the faith. Conversely,
religion in families can unify individuals with a
spouse, family members, members of a religious
congregation and promote harmony with family
members and others resulting from religious
belief, practice, identity, and traditions.
• Element 6a: Relationally divisive. A Native
American Catholic wife described how faith
influenced her dating decisions:
I wouldn’t go out with a [non-Christian] ...
because that is not my faith. I am a Christian
Why Religion Helps and Harms Families
and that is my belief system and why would I
want to get involved on a personal level with
somebody who did not share that?
A Jewish wife expressed how she and her hus-
band had to be willing to be different even from
close friends of different faiths in order to better
obey their religious principles:
It got so complicated, that finally we just backed
out. Because we went to someone’s house one
night, she made this wonderful chicken stew, but
then she used meat that wasn’t kosher, so we
couldn’t eat it and you couldn’t even eat the vegeta-
bles because they were cooked in with the chicken.
… It just got so complicated with the food ... that
we backed out [of dinners in contexts that were not
kosher].
• Element 6b: Relationally unifying. Religion
allowed participants to meet others’ needs and
provided common ground on which reliable
relationships could be built. A U.S.-raised
Mormon mother married to a husband born
and raised in Fiji said:
I think lots of people, if they live in the same
town or … same general area, they have an
understanding of what life [should be] like,
but [my husband and I] came from two totally
separate universes almost. [We] might as well
be on two different planets, but because we have
the same faith, that unified us on a whole different
level.
An Arab American Muslim husband said pray-
ing with others was a unifying experience:
Everyone is equal at the mosque; you can stand
wherever you want. The poor person is standing
next to the rich man … the sick is standing next to
the healthy, the white is standing next to the black.
There is an equality … that brings the society
together.2
Others mentioned how unity occurred when they
worked and served with fellow believers.
2 While this comment focused on how prayers in a masjid
(mosque) can unite people across cultural and economic
divides, others might point out that traditional Islamic prayer
practice also separates people by gender (as do religious
services in some other faith communities such as Orthodox
Jews, some Eastern Orthodox Christian rites, some evangel-
icals, the Amish, and Mormons in their holy temples).
231
Helping and harming. Unifying aspects of
religious involvement, such as social support,
have been found repeatedly (Marks & Dollahite,
2017). Less obvious are helpful aspects of the
divisive element. A strong sense of religious
identity may divide one and/or one’s group
from others. Being unified with members of
one’s family and faith community was seen as
a positive influence in the lives of many we
interviewed. Many adolescents reported that
their sense of religious identity provided them
with a strong sense of identity. Yet, on the down-
side, a 17-year-old Jewish girl reflected, “The
strongest sort of challenges ... come from when
you feel being Jewish isolates you from your
friends, or isolates you from the surrounding
area, or that having any sort of strong faith
isolates you.”
Duality 7: Religion in Families May Bring
Perplexing Mysteries and Profound Meanings
Religion can bring perplexing mysteries
about relational realities that are difficult to
understand or accept despite—or because
of—religiousness. Religion can offer profound
understandings about marriage, family life,
and relationships that provide purpose, sig-
nificance, and identity. Many people find a
sense of ultimate meaning and purpose from
their faith. But even those who take their
faith seriously also experience a number of
pressing questions to which their faith may
not provide satisfying answers. It may be that
most religious persons and families live with
some degree of both certitude and doubt. Thus,
exploring how people and families work out
those tensions in a relational context may
be vital.
• Element 7a: Perplexing mysteries. An African
American nondenominational Christian hus-
band of a seriously ill wife stated:
I knew the condition she was in. All that was
on my mind ... when you get stressed and
you get to that boiling point ... it’s because
of what I’m trying to get over, trying to do
it myself. [I remember] saying, “Why is she in this
condition?” But you know, there’s no answer,
because God [has] got the answer. … We know
God [is] a healer, but still, what she’s going
through right now—what she goes through, I’m
going through. So, I have to block all that out of
my mind and say, “Alright God, it’s all up to
you,” and it’s stressful.
232
• Element 7b: Profound meanings. One father
said, of his religious perspective on his mar-
riage:
Sometimes [marriage] just seems like a transac-
tional, contractual relationship. And then you step
back and have the experience of “[No], this is
more.” This is not just another person in my life
and a friendship, but this is something more
significant, more profound, more rewarding,
more endearing, and more purposeful. Not only
because of ourselves being a unit, but [because
of] our child.
A nondenominational Christian father said:
I was telling you earlier that it’s just a blessing
to see your family grow up and mature and use
their spiritual gifts and start to be active in ministry
and furthering the kingdom of God. I mean it’s
just an amazing thing to watch. It doesn’t compare
to anything else that I know of. It gives purpose,
meaning, it’s what life’s all about, the rest is just
distractions and details, stuff that doesn’t really
matter.
Helping and harming. Meaning provided by
religion can provide direction, purpose, expla-
nation, and understanding in the face of life’s
difficult questions and some understanding in
the face of family challenges. A sense of reli-
gious or spiritual mystery about life’s great-
est challenges can be positive in that it can
encourage a sense of wonder, humility, and
patience. However, a sense of meaning provided
by religion can also be harmful if pat answers
discourage exploration, if simplistic theolog-
ical perspectives limit deeper thinking, or if
religious certitude engenders arrogance. Reli-
gious and spiritual mystery can be harmful if
it leads to abiding existential confusion or a
sense of nihilism about the potential for mean-
ingful answers to life’s greatest questions and
challenges.
Duality 8: Religion in Families May Be a
Transforming and a Maintaining Influence
Religion in families is a transforming influ-
ence that encourages personal and relational
growth, change, progress, and reconciliation.
Religion in families is also a maintaining influ-
ence that entails abiding truths, timeless rituals,
and enduring traditions that promote relational
Journal of Family Theory & Review
stability. Some Jewish participants discussed
Pesach (Passover) or Shabbat as rituals that are
millennia old (Marks et al., in press).
• Element 8a: Transforming influence. Faith
helps people change. A teenage, Baptist son
described how his religion impacted his life
for good: “[Religion] changes the focus of my
life to bettering myself, to trying to serve God
in any way I can in the community I’m in.
So, it completely alters your whole reality.”
A Jewish wife explained:
For me, faith is ongoing, it’s not stagnant. It
changes, it evolves. … Certainly, you have …
the sense of God, and unity, but as far as obser-
vance and commitment and things that I do, it
does change. I’ve grown with my kids.
Participants typically spoke of gradual changes,
but a Christian wife reported a rapid change:
Our practice of going to church on Sunday … I
feel transformed within the hour that I can actually
do it. … [Recently] I went in there mad as heck
and somehow the madness floats away, and those
kinds of things, those verses and those passages,
stories, are reminders of how we want to be kinder
and gentler each day.
• Element 8b: Maintaining influence. An
example of the maintaining influence is
provided by a Quaker wife: “Quakers have
practiced the equality of men and women for
350 years, that women have been preaching in
meeting for worship. … There are examples
going back 350 years in our faith.” A Pres-
byterian couple discussed how fascinating it
was to be able to talk about Old Testament
traditions and words that have been around
for “5,000 years.” Participants discussed how
they lived religious principles throughout
the course of their own lives. An African
American Christian husband said: “Church
has just always been my life. I’ve known
church since birth. I don’t know anything
else.”
Helping and harming. The conservative element
of religion can provide a family with structure,
stability, and continuity in a changing world. The
transformative element of religion can help facil-
itate growth, change, improvement, and flexi-
bility in personal and family life. However, the
Why Religion Helps and Harms Families
conservative element in religion can be harmful
when family members are not willing to accept
needed change, since clinging to tradition may
lead to excessive rigidity or to stale, boring, or
even dead religious practice. Religious individ-
uals can experience harm if they are unwilling
to change when change is necessary or could be
beneficial. It also may be harmful if only one
person in a family unit wants to change and the
rest do not. Isolated change can be lonely, even
painful.
Illustrating the Dynamic Nature of the System
of Dualities
The dynamic and stabilizing influences
of dualities. Table 1 illustrates the system
of dualities and elements in relation to each
other, and illustrates to what extent the elements
are more or less likely to have a dynamic or
stabilizing influence in families. The eight
elements in the upper half of the model (and
identified as the “a” element in Table 1) are
more likely to have a dynamic influence on
the family and the eight elements in the lower
half of the model (and identified as the “b”
element in Table 1) are more likely to have
a stabilizing influence on families. Figure 1
includes eight intersecting figure-eight shapes,
each of which we call a curvilinear continuum.
Each curvilinear continuum symbolizes the per-
petual interaction and tension between the two
elements of each duality. The circle of inward
pointing arrows symbolizes dialectic movement
toward greater balance between elements. The
fact that all continua intersect in the middle
symbolizes that all dualities (and elements)
are interconnected in a system of dualities. In
a healthy, functioning religious family, there
may exist awareness of and negotiations about
tensions between elements of dualities. Thus,
although the figure is focused on description of
the system of dualities, it suggests the potential
benefits of movement toward conversations
about personal, couple, and family choices and
process that might influence how the family
is currently living out their religious beliefs
and practices. The dashes between elements
symbolize connection and movement in the
“circle dance” of elements we discuss later.
Dynamic, dialectic processes within dualities.
The flowing figure-eight symbols in Figure 1
with all eight dualities seemingly resting in the
233
center represent the ideal of Aristotle’s golden
mean, wherein balance is achieved by weighing
differing ideas, ideals, and expressions while
avoiding imbalance or even fanaticism (see
Berger & Zijderveld, 2009). However, Figure 2
illustrates that in most cases the actual processes
involving dualities are complex because of the
factors mentioned earlier as well as other issues,
including communication, problem-solving
skills, and other family systems processes. The
flowing figure-eight symbols in Figure 1 do
not adequately represent probable variations in
attempts by individuals, couples, and families
to navigate various dualities. An individual
or family can get stalled in ongoing efforts
to meaningfully navigate dualities (illustrated
by “stall”). An individual or family can also
get stuck in a religious or relational cul-de-sac
by becoming fixated on one aspect of duality
while failing to incorporate the other (e.g., being
overly fixated on, for example, the maintaining
aspect of duality while ignoring and failing to
adapt to the transforming aspect, when helpful
or needed). Another pattern of navigating dual-
ities, represented by zigzag lines, is turbulence.
During periods of turbulence, the individual or
family is neither stalled nor fixated, they are
progressing but their progress is not a smooth
flow but a jarring push through periods includ-
ing death, loss, anomie, doubt, depression, life
transitions, and assorted existential wrestles.
Additional possibilities illustrated in Figure 2
include confusion (not knowing what is happen-
ing and why the family is so divided on an issue),
negative spiral (when struggles over dualities
lead to increasingly poor relationships), or a
wall (family members are unwilling or unable
to make needed compromises or changes to deal
with a duality). In Figure 2, we seek to bring
these poignant realities that emerge throughout
our qualitative work to the foreground. This
complexity suggests that the road toward man-
aging dualities in religious families typically
will involve a variety of challenges requiring
complex processes to resolve them. We take up
several of these issues in detail in other recent
work (Dollahite et al., in press; Dollahite &
Marks, 2017).
Discussion of the Conceptual Model
We have proposed that divergent outcomes in
religious families occur because of religious
duality. We explored a dynamic, systems model
234 Journal of Family Theory & Review

Figure 1. Elements of Duality in Relation to Each Other and to Their Dynamic and Stabilizing Influence in
Families.

Note. Elements of each duality are on the opposite side of the curvilinear continuum (figure-eight shape) that represent an
ongoing dialectic process between elements in each duality.
Why Religion Helps and Harms Families
Figure 2. Dynamic, Dialectic Processes Within Dualities.
Turbulence
Stuck
Stall
of duality using examples from an ethnically and
geographically diverse sample of American fam-
ilies from more than 15 denominations of Chris-
tianity, the three major branches of Judaism, and
the two major branches of Islam. Our research
suggests that most of the elements of dual-
ity were pervasive (and often divergent) in the
lives of a majority of these religious families.
However, there is much we do not yet understand
about the ways that religious dualities work in
families. We discuss here other avenues of inves-
tigation that we hope will help researchers for-
mulate a practical paradigm of duality and diver-
gence at the nexus of faith and family life.
The 3 Ds and 2 Cs of Duality
Are dualities dualistic, dialectic, or dialogic?
They may be any or all of these. Are dualities
categorical or continuous? They may be either
or both. Like the religious and relational reali-
ties that the concept of dualities is intended to
explain, we currently define the concept itself as
dualistic and multifaceted.
Dualities are dualistic. Religious and relational
dualities involve two inherently different ideas
that are in abiding, dynamic tension with each
other. Those tensions may or may not be recog-
nized, addressed, or resolved by any given per-
son or relationship.
Dualities are dialectic. The classic dialectic of
thesis, antithesis, and synthesis can be used to
think about the system of dualities we propose.
Each element of duality can be thought of as a
thesis with its corresponding element as antithe-
sis. The synthesis would be how persons and
families work out a viable relationship between
the elements in their religious and family lives.
235
Confusion
Negative
Spiral
Wall
Dualities are dialogic. Religious and relational
dualities are in an ongoing “conversation” with
each other and part of what goes on in any reli-
gious family is an ongoing dialog about how
the family will live out their faith. That ongo-
ing dialog is influenced by personal experiences
and preferences, changing cultural expectations,
the nature of the religious community, religious
leaders, developmental changes in family mem-
bers, and other factors.
Dualities are partly categorical. Dualities and
their elements include different categories of
ideas. We have placed the dualities into four con-
ceptual categories and their elements into two
categories (dynamic and stabilizing) to assist
in conceptual clarification and exploration. We
think these ideas include social and psychologi-
cal processes that are different across those cat-
egories.
Dualities are continuous. We consider the pairs
of elements as not strictly dichotomous but
rather somewhat continuous. So, they might be
called “soft dichotomies” or “partially continu-
ous.” For religious families and those working to
help them, this way of thinking may well be part
of the process of bringing balance to the oppos-
ing forces inherent in each duality.
“How Are You Religious?”
For decades, social science questionnaires have
asked people about their level of religiosity
by asking about the frequency of religious
attendance and prayer, and religious salience
(Granqvist, 1998; Hall, Koenig, & Meador,
2010; Idler et al., 2003; Jordan, Masters,
Hooker, Ruiz, & Smith, 2014). In addition to
these kinds of questions, another important
236
set of questions may be asked: “How are you
religious?” The degree of religiosity of family
members likely influences how they deal with
any religious dualities, with greater religiosity
likely involving greater influence of dualities
on the family system. However, we propose
that how family members approach their reli-
gion (i.e., how they are religious) may have even
greater influence on how they deal with a system
of dualities. Drawing on work by Shichida et al.
(2015), we briefly discuss two ways of being
religious—progressive and traditional—and
possible interaction with religious dualities of
these ways.
Progressive ways of being religious. Progres-
sive approaches to faith may provide adherents
with a community of diverse-thinking people
who look to historical, spiritual, religious, and
moral ideas to inspire efforts to promote eco-
nomic, social, political, legal, and relational jus-
tice while also encouraging care of the environ-
ment. Conversely, more progressive approaches
to religion may foster indecision, moral rela-
tivism, hedonism, and a sole focus on social
outcomes to the exclusion of ultimate meaning,
transcendence, and self-sacrifice.
Traditional ways of being religious. More tradi-
tional approaches to faith may provide adherents
with a tightly knit community of like-minded
people that possess a clear sense of purpose, a
clear and stable set of moral standards, and a
sense of religious and moral clarity in an increas-
ingly confusing world. Conversely, more tradi-
tional approaches to faith may foster prejudices,
gender inequality and oppression, religious and
familial rigidities, cliquishness, excessive guilt
and shame, and lack of intellectual curiosity.
Best of both ways?. A body of scholarship has
indicated that whether people approach their
faith in more traditional ways or more progres-
sive ways influences marriage and family rela-
tionships (Shichida et al., 2015). Therefore, it
could be scientifically and practically important
to study how families from progressive and tra-
ditional faiths—of similar degrees of religious
involvement—approach the system of dualities
in families. Which dualities link with which
aspect of each approach to produce helpful and
harmful outcomes? We propose that sustained
exploration of different ways of dealing with
duality that mitigate the harmful effects of each
Journal of Family Theory & Review
approach while maximizing the positive poten-
tialities would be valuable.
What Makes Religion Harmful?
Many factors may lead to religion becoming
harmful, including applying religion in imma-
ture or selfish ways, extremism, fanaticism, or
applying religious ideas when and where they
do not beneficially apply (Greenwald & Harder,
2003; Pratt, 2010). For example, keeping mar-
ital commitments is a relational good valued
by many faiths (Olson, Goddard, & Marshall,
2013). However, even this normally helpful rela-
tional aspect of religion can become harmful, for
example, when a person who has no fear that
her/his spouse will seek divorce uses that unwa-
vering commitment as a reason not to attend to
the spouse’s needs or grow as a partner.
When religiosity is combined with neuroti-
cism it can cause marital problems (Sullivan,
2001). It is likely that damage also can occur
when religiosity is combined with other men-
tal illness and personality disorders (e.g.,
pedophilia, obsessive compulsive disorders)
and family dysfunction (e.g., enmeshment).
Religious beliefs, practices, and communities
likely have divergent effects depending on the
age, gender, culture, personality, temperament,
political leanings, and socioeconomic status of
the religious practitioner.
Recommendations for Future Research
and Theory Construction
Research on how a system of dualities com-
bines with these and other factors can be of
theoretical and practical interest. Many of the
harmful outcomes of religion may occur when
religion is mixed with negative influences, such
as mental illness, rigidity, oppression, abuse,
anger, and injustice. Indeed, it may be that to
lead to the most positive outcomes, religion
must be combined with positive phenomena,
such as kind action, wisdom, education, rigorous
social science, balanced emotional and mental
health, equity, justice, compassion, generosity,
and other virtues. Thus, combinations of factors
that typically result in helpful or harmful out-
comes for families should be explored.
Dancing or Dueling Dualities?
Research also is needed on the interesting and
important ways that dualities systematically
Why Religion Helps and Harms Families
interact with each other in family life. Dualities
may be especially potent when combined and
these combinations may be helpful or harmful.
For example, it might be particularly helpful for
parents of a child with a significant disability
to have a transcendent spiritual experience (1a),
involving a relational compensator (5b) that
provides emotional and cognitive comfort in the
face of the situation, that results in a profound
feeling of relational unity (6b) with the child
with special needs and with God. Conversely,
it might be particularly harmful for parents
of a child with significant disabilities to feel
the burden of religiously-oriented expectations
from their own parents to take their child to
services (4b) and divided from their parents and
their faith community (6a).
As families act in ways that emphasize
certain elements of particular dualities, could
that have predictable connections with other
elements? For example, if a family empha-
sizes God as an authority figure are they also
more likely to live in ways that encourage
relational divisiveness, religious expectations,
maintaining influence, and refusing actions? If
a family emphasizes God as a close confidant
are they also more likely to emphasize tran-
scendent experience, relational unity, relational
compensators, transforming influence, and
accepting actions? There are a number of
other interesting and potentially meaningful
ways that dualities may influence each other,
including canceling each other out, creating
stalemates, or building on each other. Fur-
ther theorizing and empirical testing could
explore these and other ways that dualities
dance with or duel against one another. Thus,
the eight dualities, each consisting of two
interacting elements, interact as elements and
as a pair with other elements and pairs. Like
an English country dance in which couples
dance with other couples in intricate patterns,
each element seems to move in concert with
its “partner” element but also with several
others.
Dynamic Dualities?
Other questions address to what extent dif-
ferent dualities are dynamic or static across
time. Are some dualities more dynamic than
others in how they affect families? Do families
move through dualities in different ways over
time based on personal growth and change,
237
their place in the life course (e.g., newly mar-
ried or long married, actively raising children
or empty nesters), and personal, familial,
and societal nonnormative events (personal
conversion, juvenile delinquency, natural dis-
asters, economic changes)? Questions about
the ways that time influences how families
address religious and relational dualities are also
recommended.
Do Dualities Relate to Spiritual and Moral
Development?
Another set of questions address whether and
how dualities might relate to spiritual and moral
development in children, youth, and adults. Do
individuals in families that emphasize certain
elements experience certain kinds of spiritual
development? If a family emphasizes certain
elements (e.g., maintaining influence, religious
expectations) are children and youth more likely
to remain more traditional/orthodox in their
approach to religion? If this were done in a
rigid and unhealthy way, are grown children
more likely to become more progressive or lib-
eral in their approach to religion or perhaps
leave religion behind? Are persons in families
that work to balance or integrate opposing ele-
ments of dualities more likely to become spir-
itually and morally flexible? These and other
important questions could be explored in future
research.
Saving Faith: Harnessing the Power of Duality
for Good
Given its mixed record, many doubt the ability of
religious involvement to provide mostly helpful
outcomes in contemporary family life. There is
wariness about the potential harm religion might
bring in its wake. Like nuclear power, water
behind a dam, gasoline, or fire, strong religious
belief can have both constructive and destruc-
tive outcomes depending on how it is channeled
and applied. Our culture rightly expends signif-
icant resources to encourage people to use pow-
erful and potentially dangerous things such as
electricity, fire, and gasoline (as well as sub-
stances that impair judgment) in responsible
ways to protect themselves and others. Reli-
giosity is among the most potent personal and
social forces at work in human experience and
we believe it is also important to explore how
to best employ and apply it for the benefit of
238
individuals, couples, families, and society (Burr
et al., 2012; Stark, 2012).
Scholars may have collectively arrived at a
point in the evolution of the social and behav-
ioral sciences, religious studies, and human
communications that we can formulate and dis-
seminate a set of principles and processes that
will allow us to help a large proportion of human
beings to live at the nexus of faith and family
life in optimal and authentic ways for persons
(children, youth, adults) and relationships (see
Dollahite, Marks, Kear, Lewis, & Stokes, 2017).
We believe that understanding how to harness
the positive power of dualities while more
carefully navigating negative and damaging
approaches to dualities can be a vitally impor-
tant asset for families and professionals striving
to help them.
What can family scholars and practitioners
hope to achieve? In the world of religion, the
desired outcomes talked about tend to be ulti-
mate in nature such as eternal life, salvation,
nirvana, bliss, perfection, and sanctification. In
the social and behavioral sciences, the desired
outcomes are more modest, pedestrian, and
particular, such as well-being, satisfaction,
adjustment, development, self-esteem, and suc-
cess. The outcomes we believe are attainable
through social and behavioral research and
outreach include understanding the nature of
the system of dualities in faith and family life,
and learning how to think and act in marriage
and family relationships in ways that respect
and manage dualities and the divergences that
typically emerge from them.
Limitations of the Theoretical Perspective
This conceptual framework certainly has lim-
itations. Ideas in our model come largely
from careful study of families of Abrahamic
faiths. Non-Western faiths were not studied,
which may hinder generalizability to families
in non-Abrahamic religions. We suggest that
future studies be conducted to determine how
the concepts discussed may apply in more reli-
giously diverse families. Another limitation to
generalizability is that our framework is based
only on interviews with highly religious and
intrafaith families. Follow-up studies on these
ideas in families that are interfaith, not strongly
religious, or nonmarital structures would bring
a new understanding to the concepts discussed.
We have begun such work.
Journal of Family Theory & Review
Conclusion and Invitation
Throughout human history, religion and family
have served to bind individuals to each other and
to something greater than themselves in positive
ways. However, both religion and relationships
have been fraught with serious and complex
problems that have led to great human suffering
and frustration. When faith and family relations
are combined—when the power of religion is
linked with the powerful social and emotional
bonds inherent in family relationships—both
great good and horrific harm to children, women,
men, and society are possible. The idea that the
nexus of religion and family involves a system
of dualities with powerfully divergent outcomes
suggests that it would be surprising if this nexus
would not involve both good and bad outcomes.
Indeed, a core purpose of religion may be to
help human beings address dualities inherent in
life—including family life.
In this article, we have proposed that mak-
ing sense of, wrestling with, and living with
dualities is a vital and inherent aspect of liv-
ing a joyous and healthy personal, marital, and
familial life of faith. For those of us striving to
understand and strengthen these marriages and
families, a healthy wrestle—and perhaps even a
dance—with dualities may be one way to con-
tribute. We are committed to continue to conduct
the work necessary to help move us along the
path toward greater clarity on this question and
invite our colleagues to join us in this endeavor.
We invite our colleagues to weigh in on the
possible advantages of our flexible approach to
conceptualizing dualities or, in contrast, why it
might be better to settle on one way of think-
ing about dualities. There may be many other
relational and religious dualities at the nexus of
faith and family life. We invite our colleagues
to work with us in identifying and exploring
additional dualities that make a difference in
family life.
Authors’ Note
This is a revision of a paper prepared for the Theory
Construction and Research Methodology Workshop of the
National Council on Family Relations, Baltimore, MD
(November 18–19, 2014). The first author appreciates
funding from the Eliza R. Snow Fellowship and the BYU
Religious Studies Center. We appreciate helpful feedback
on previous drafts by Julie Zaloudek, Romulus Chelbegean,
Alina Baltazar, Rob Palkovitz, Todd Martin, David Bell,
Randy Day, and Katy Dollahite. We are grateful to Toshi
Shichida for coordinating the coding process and for coding
Why Religion Helps and Harms Families
assistance from Kelsie Dean, Stephanie Seaborn, Veda Rose,
Rebekah DeBoer, Heather Garbe Venera, JillAnne Jensen,
Jordan Kohl, and Naomi Winters. Hilary Dalton (third
author) also was involved in coding most of the interviews.
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Supporting Information
Additional supporting information may be
found in the online version of this article:
Appendix S1. Appendix. Sample, Coding
Process, and Data Table
Table S1. Number and Percentage of Families
Including Various Elements of Religious Duality